Society

Thursday

The Spectator

Barometer | 18 May 2017

Veggie skills Forest Green Rovers, described as the world’s first vegan football club, was promoted to the Football League. Some sportsmen who have become vegan: Neil Robinson turned vegan at 23 while playing football for Everton in 1980. Dustin Watton played in the US National Volleyball team in 2015. Peter Siddle, a bowler in the Australian cricket team, turned vegan in 2013. Griff Whalen plays American football for Miami Dolphins. Only vegan food is served at the Forest Green Rovers ground, but some players were filmed scoffing meat pizzas in 2016. Who’s on board? Theresa May wants worker representatives on company boards, if not actual workers. Who were the 1,546 people on

Lavatch

Constitutional Amendment

Unclued lights are six characters from 45 and its author. Five of these undergo 45 in one way before entry; the other two must undergo 45 in another way afterwards (leaving real words). Collins confirms the thematic information.   Across 1    Radical dissent about America’s dirty quality (9) 11    Briefly desiring drug (7) 13    Endlessly long time (4) 14    Apennines loop around from peninsula (13) 15    Loathing crone keeping money (6) 17    Tradesmen are not seen in half a millennium (5) 18    Bird from north, e.g. returning (4) 20    Rating the French as clever (4) 22    Society girl, maybe Lily (6) 24    Land one’s entered before (4) 25    Nuts acting

Lavatch

2307: Obit IV | 18 May 2017

On 18 March 2017 the great ROCK’N’ROLLER (3) Chuck Berry died. Round the perimeter run the titles of four of his compositions, ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN, JOHNNY B. GOODE, YOU NEVER CAN TELL and NADINE, followed by his initials. The further title given is SWEET LITTLE SIXTEEN (14/26/23).   First prize Peter Dean, London W8 Runners-up E. & S. Macintosh, Darlington, Co. Durham; Storm Hutchinson, Dulas, Anglesey

Toby Young Toby Young

A vote for the Tories is now a vote for a free press

I have long campaigned against the activation of section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, as well as a second Leveson inquiry which would have examined the culture, practices and ethics of the press, so I was delighted that the Conservative manifesto says that neither will happen. The Government held a consultation about this earlier this year and the wording in the manifesto is the first official response to that consultation. I hope that this now puts the matter to bed.  If section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act was activated it would have meant that any publication not a member of Impress, the press regulator largely funded

Katy Balls Katy Balls

The never-ending deficit – Tories put off balancing the books until 2026

At today’s Tory manifesto launch, Theresa May put some clear blue water between herself and the Cameroons as she ditched many of the 2015 manifesto pledges. But there is one area of continuity. May managed to continue George Osborne’s longstanding tradition of putting off balancing the books. On the subject of the UK deficit, the manifesto acknowledges that there is work to do on deficit reduction before announcing that the party will push the date back even further for eliminating it. May has given herself until the middle of the next decade (so by 2026 at latest) to balance the books: ‘There is still work to do on deficit reduction, so we will

Helen Nugent

The sun shines on retail sales

When the sun shineth…go shopping. That’s what we did in our droves during April, boosting retail sales by 4 per cent compared to the same month last year. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), anecdotal evidence from retailers suggests that good weather contributed to growth in sales, which increased by 2.3 per cent in the three months to April compared to a 1.4 per cent decline in the first quarter. And there’s the fact that Easter also fell in April this year, prompting sales of furniture, golf equipment and motorbike accessories. Analysts were cheered by the data, which was beyond their expectations, but said the real test lies ahead. Michael Baxter, economics commentator

Jamie Bartlett

The real radicals are now on the right – and the left can’t stand it

The apparent success of the ‘alt-right’ and ‘populist right’ movements in Europe and the US has analysts scratching around for explanations. It’s economics at heart, say the serious academics. The annoyed liberals counter that it’s really hidden xenophobia unleashed. The sensible centrists, Economist-reading types, agree a little with both and sagely add cultural nervousness: a symptom of too much change, too quickly. There’s some truth in each, but there’s one ingredient missing. For many people this newish radical right (by which I mean the very loose coalition of anti-globalisation, anti-left wing, populist right-wing groups) has become a rebellious counter-culture. Deny it if you want! But the depressing fact for liberals and

Laura Whitcombe

Four ways to protect your finances on holiday

British families are forecast to spend £1,284.54 per person on this year’s summer holiday. That’s up more than £200 on what they forked out last year, says charitable shopping website Give as you Live. And with inflation gathering momentum and the pound still weak, many of us will feel we’re not getting a lot of bang for our buck when we finally get to our destinations. So it would be sensible to consider the simple steps you can take now to protect any money you’ve already spent on your trip – as well as what you’ll spend when you get there – to ensure you don’t end up paying out

The Spectator

A brave new world

From ‘The New Reform Bill’, The Spectator, 19 May 1917: Though we used to be opposed to the suffrage for women, and have only accepted it in view of the great upheaval of the war, we feel most strongly that it had better be ‘a clean cut’ and a generous cut. Just as we opposed it on the ground not of the incompetency of women, but because we held that the suffrage had better be confined to one sex, so, now this view is untenable, we hold it is very much better that women should be put upon an entire electoral equality with men. The women who will be excluded …

Bruce Anderson

French fancies

‘That sweet enemy, France.’ It takes a poet to summarise centuries of military and diplomatic history. On a prosaic level, if we consider Anglo-French relations over many centuries, all the evidence vindicates Sidney’s judgment. Although there is much that each nation admires and respects in the other, we have never been natural allies. For hundreds of years, we fought each other, which never prevented Britain from thriving and prospering. Then we started going to war together. Crimea: a pointless venture. The two world wars: there was probably no alternative to shoring up French weakness in order to resist German domination. But it cost us blood, treasure, an Empire, and it

Rory Sutherland Rory Sutherland

Why we need paper promises

When you get into a taxi, there’s usually a framed sheet of paper describing what you pay for your trip: the cost of every mile travelled at different times of day, and the price of waiting time. As digital screens become ever cheaper, it won’t be long before someone suggests that there is no need to have these things any more. Instead a button will appear on the taxi’s new seatback touchscreen which will reveal the tariff when pressed. All very sensible, you may think. Except for this. The nature of a promise displayed on paper is subtly different to a promise displayed on a screen. Anything writ in liquid

Max Pemberton

This is an emergency

The NHS as we know it is dying. It’s no longer a matter of if it will collapse, but when. Those of us who work on the front line have known this for some time, and it’s heartbreaking. Last week’s ransomware cyber-attack served to highlight how frail and vulnerable the health service is. While many tried to blame Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt for failing to prevent such a disaster, the archaic IT system is actually emblematic of how the NHS as a whole has struggled to keep up to date and adapt to the modern world with the necessary speed. I trained as a doctor specifically because I was so

Jenny Coad

Throw in the towel

Spas are supposed to be relaxing. You pad around in a regulation robe and too-big slippers. Everything is beautifully soft, crisply white, low lit. There are loungers for flopping and glasses of tea —pale yellow and herbal, not builder’s. Towels are everywhere. It’s rehydrating, restful, rejuvenating. Music tinkles in the background; occasionally a cymbal resounds. The treatment list has huge promise. You will emerge looking glorious or at least a shinier — hopefully slimmer — version of yourself. Medical spas go further still. Your liver will be grateful, your skin more youthful, your lumps and bumps smoothed, your outlook revolutionised. Ten years ago, spas were thought to be a bit

James Bartholomew

Life in a gulag

I was invited to Moscow earlier this year to give a talk about my latest book. But while I was there, I wanted to see if I could track down a few survivors of the gulags — the prison work camps where millions died during the communist years. I wanted to film interviews with them to be used as exhibits in a museum of communist terror which I hope to help create. I asked Anne Applebaum, who wrote Gulag: A History of the Soviet Camps, if she could offer any advice on finding survivors. She gave me tips but added: ‘You’re a bit late.’ The people who were incarcerated in

Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Big money, big data and the dead cat strategy

In his new book Move Fast and Break Things, the American academic Jonathan Taplin makes a decent case that, democratically speaking, the internet has gone awry. Tools and freedoms which originally promised to allow individuals to challenge the powerful, he argues, are instead exploited by the powerful to dodge the demands of society. He’s writing about copy-right and tax, mainly. But he could have been writing about political advertising. On the radio last weekend, my friend and colleague Lord Finkelstein (I don’t actually call him Lord Finkelstein) was talking about the skills of Sir Lynton Crosby, the Tory election mastermind. ‘Lots of election campaigns are taking place where you can’t

Martin Vander Weyer Martin Vander Weyer

Here’s who should be Mrs May’s cabinet supremo to tackle the housing shortage

Who should be housing supremo in what we all assume will be Mrs May’s new administration? Brandon Lewis and Gavin Barwell, recent junior ministers with that brief, achieved nothing — if we also assume the brief was to procure an adequate supply of new homes, in the private sector or ‘social’ one, which the ‘just about managing’ could afford. The number of affordable homes built in 2015-16 was just 32,000, half that built in the previous year and the lowest since 1992. But action is coming — apparently. ‘We will fix the broken housing market,’ declares Mrs May, mustard-keen on fixing broken markets, ‘to build a new generation of council

Lucy Vickery

Lost in translation | 18 May 2017

In Competition No. 2998 you were invited to submit a set of instructions for an everyday device that have been badly translated into English.   Poorly translated menus are more or less guaranteed to raise a holiday snigger (albeit tinged with a guilty awareness of one’s own linguistic shortcomings), but the challenge here was to amuse while staying the right side of intelligible. This you managed with varying degrees of success.   On the whole, though, your entries were well-judged: funny, charming, poignant even. Commendations go to Max Ross and Brian Murdoch. And to P.C. Parrish, who managed to make piercing film lids sound almost exciting: ‘For tiptop consummation, finger

Wednesday

Helen Nugent

Families under further pressure as earnings growth slows

There’s more doom and gloom for households today as new figures reveal the first decline in real earnings since September 2014. According to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), earnings growth slowed in the three months to March, at 2.1 per cent, compared to previous data which showed wages, excluding bonuses, grew at 2.2 per cent. This compares to inflation which jumped to 2.7 per cent in April. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6 per cent in the three months to March, and is now at its lowest rate since 1975. It was previously 4.7 per cent. It means that 1.54 million people are currently unemployed. While some analysts say that the

Tuesday

Helen Nugent

There’s a shed-load of valuables in your garden, but are you insured?

Ah, Chelsea. Or in my case, ah, Tatton. It’s that time of year again when the Royal Horticultural Society revs up for its slew of annual flower shows, allowing us green-fingered enthusiasts the chance to seek out the lesser-spotted Titchmarsh and the perennially pleasing Monty Don. It’s also a good time to do an inventory of our own gardens, not least the garden shed. You might not know it, but that building at the bottom of the lawn could be harbouring a shed-load of uninsured valuables. While a fair few sheds are home to nothing more than old pots, bits of string and rusty shovels, many are full of items that thieves